Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Here is the summer 2010 edition of UALC's Professional Training Update. Below you will find upcoming professional development opportunities listed in order by date. Don’t miss out on these great opportunities!

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Want to develop more skills for yourself or your employees? UALC’s staff sharing program provides funding for UALC member employees to train and work within other UALC libraries to develop beneficial skills for their jobs and organizations. Any employee, full or part time, that is employed in a member library may request a sharing opportunity with another UALC library. It’s as simple as working with their supervisor, director and host library to determine if the staff sharing opportunity would be beneficial, and completing the application. Individuals may apply for one staff sharing opportunity per year, and each library may apply for more than one sharing activity per year.

"Managing Your Career" is the topic of this year's UALC Professional Development Retreat. The retreat will be held on Friday, August 13, 2010 at Weber State University. Rachel Singer Gordon will be the keynote speaker and will also serve as the facilitator for a session on “How to Get Published.” More details will be available soon.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

“Utah’s Connecting to Collections Project: A Statewide Preservation Initiative,” a 2009-2010 project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, includes a statewide web survey on preservation needs, and a series of Town Hall meetings to discuss key findings of the survey and garner feedback from cultural heritage staff at institutions around the state.

The project is being directed by representatives of a diverse group of heritage repositories. Led by Randy Silverman of the University of Utah Libraries, the Project Task Force also includes representation from the highest administrative levels of the Utah State Archives, Utah State Library, Utah State History, Office of Museum Services, Utah Academic Library Consortium, Brigham Young University, and the LDS Church History Department.

Beginning on September 4, 2009, the survey was available for eleven weeks. From a potential respondent universe of approximately 463 collecting institutions, 203 institutions completed surveys. Among the respondents to the survey, there were a large number of state and local government agencies, which are a group often overlooked in preservation planning. Public libraries, academic libraries, and history museums/repositories were the other leading respondent groups, although, all told, 16 different cultural heritage institution types completed at least one of the questionnaires.

Initial findings of the survey project cover many topics of interest in preservation, including planning and funding; training; existing and planned preservation activities; environmental control, security, and disaster preparedness; preservation resource sharing; digital collections; and institutional information including annual operating and preservation budgets. Survey results can be viewed in the final preservation report at http://www.ualc.net/Media/Utah%20C2C%20Survey%20Final%20Report.pdf

Utah State University and Design Workshop, Inc., a leading international landscape architecture firm, have partnered to create the Design Workshop Landscape Architecture Archive and Digital Collection. The archive is a collaborative effort between Design Workshop, USU’s Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, Merrill-Cazier Library’s Special Collections and Archives and the library’s Digital Initiatives Department.

The archive features a collection of projects that highlights the firm’s Legacy Design philosophy, which focuses on an equal balance of four key elements: environment, community, economics and art. Merrill-Cazier Library will add a new landscape architecture digital collection to its Digital Library and partner with LAEP to develop learning objects for students.

Assisting the project is Cheryl Walters, digital initiatives department head at Merrill-Cazier Library. “There really is no archive or digital library in the country that is tackling landscape architectural records in the way we propose,” said Walters. “We feel this is truly new territory, and we are very excited about the project.”

The project will become a new collection in the Utah Academic Library Consortium's Mountain West Digital Library.

On Monday April 12, 2010 the Utah Academic Library Consortium (UALC) participated in “Snapshot 2010-One Day in the Life of Utah Libraries," Along with the Utah State Library (USL), Utah Library Association (ULA), the Utah Educational Library Media Association (UELMA, and other organizations, participants attempted to showcase what happens in a single day in libraries across the state.

120 Utah libraries participated and submitted over 300 pictures of students and patrons using the library. In just one day approximately 100,000 people visited these libraries, more than 120,000 items were borrowed, internet computers were used around 20,000 times, library staff fielded over 6,000 reference questions, and more than 11,000 people attended library programs and activities.

Joyce Ogburn, University Librarian and director of the J. Willard Marriott Library, was elected vice-president/president-elect of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). Joyce will serve a one-year term as vice-president beginning July 2010, and in July 2011 she will assume the presidency. ACRL is one of the American Library Association's largest professional organizations, working with its 12,000 members work to promote and support approximately 2,300 academic libraries throughout the U.S.